Back in 1990, author Ken Dychwald, Ph.D., had a best-selling book, Age Wave. He wrote well and spoke even better. Through the combination of his oratory and writing skills, amplified by a killer PowerPoint, Dychwald quickly became one of the nation’s most sought-after keynote speakers.
Be Active America:
A Modest Proposal
It’s simple, would be very cost effective and is science-based: Launch a massive national senior health promotion and physical fitness initiative focused at the grassroots to train aging boomers to take care of themselves. That’s right! Stop the public health dictums, silly slogans and inept campaigns and engineer a grassroots cultural shift among aging baby boomers.
Look, we have more facilities, open spaces, gymnasiums, auditoriums, pools and exercise equipment than any population in human history. About 50% is not being used to capacity most of the time.
Why not recruit and train an army of volunteer health and fitness instructors? Let’s fire up business and industry to invest in employee fitness programs that would not only reduce the cost of employee sickness care, but do the same for their retirees as well.
Is a massive national effort of this kind possible? Absolutely! Some of us are old enough to remember what President Eisenhower pitched and President Kennedy hit out of the park with the original President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. But this time, let’s avoid the “can kickers” and health bureaucrats. Let’s take care of ourselves first and then one another. Personal health is too important to leave up to a bureaucrat (infectious disease an exception).
This is what Be Active America is about. So the challenge to anyone reading this message is: What are you going to do about it. Personally.
You may be a boomer yourself, so let’s start with you. Get off your butt, suck in your gut and get moving. Right now. Anything. Go for a walk. Do some half squats. Check out Every Body’s Basic Workout (soon to be on this site). Then talk to some friends and commit to get fit.
The main thing is don’t wait for anyone else. Start with you. Find a health partner, then another. AND DON’T TRY TO GET FIT QUICKLY. But began NOW. And we promise to give you more details, support, evidence-based recommendations on this site! Stay tuned, get your ass in the saddle, and together we can ride the Age Tsunami like a bunch of kids on the beach in my native Southern California. Surf's up!
Da Coach
Simply stated, Dychwald warned that America is growing older and we are sadly unprepared for both the opportunities and problems we are going to face as individuals,families and as a nation.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that warnings, however well-documented and delivered, rarely move people to action unless they actually feel the heat. Now, fast-forward 22 years, and the temperature is definitely rising. As it turns out, Dychwald underestimated the conditions. We are not experience an Age Wave; it’s more like an Age Tsunami!
We have a huge and rapidly aging baby boomer population—some 77 million—predicted to swamp federal and state retirement systems. That’s only part of the problem. The real threat is that we are among the most debilitated, fat, inactive population in human history and are very poorly trained and conditioned in how to survive and thrive in our later years.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the No. 1 cause of premature death, disability and dependency is directly related to personal choices and generally outside medical intervention until our choices present themselves as a disease, disability or other chronic condition. Then, the sickness-care establishment becomes the necessary intervention for which significant compensation and debt follows.
Sorry, but that’s only part of the problem. The other part? There are insufficient funds or trained personnel to take care of the epidemic of chronic disease that, at current rates of morbidity and mortality, will decimate our boomers over the next 25 to 30 years.
Here’s a current example: The Social Security disability trust fund is projected to run out of cash far sooner than regular Social Security retirement plan or Medicare. That could trigger a 21 percent cut in benefits to 11 million recipients. This is because all boomers today are at least 50 years old. Coincidentally, it takes about 50 years of ass-sitting and ignoring our personal health for our various bodily systems to cave-in to the neglect. This leaves few options other than dependence on the sickness-care establishment, and financing its services.
Social Security is made up of two parts: the retirement plan and the disability plan created during the Eisenhower administration. The disability part is projected to run out of funds by 2016. Folks, that’s only four years away.
This is not news to elected officials who have ignored tough decisions for fear that tampering with promised benefits would provoke a revolt among their constituents.
We often hear politicians and pundits talk about “kicking the can down the road” when they are referencing a tough economic deadline that can be put off for the next group of elected officials to address. Well, with respect to sickness care for aging baby boomers, we are at the end of the road. We must do something that is going to bring about both short-term and long-term results while costing less than paying for sickness care.